(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on August 6, 2017, Proper 13)
Is Blessing Happiness?
Today concludes our journey with
Jacob. We began four weeks
ago. Jacob was wrestling
then. Even before he was born.
Today he is wrestling still. Not much has changed.
But today, everything is
changed. Today Jacob receives
God’s blessing.
What is God’s blessing? That is the question we have been
asking this last four weeks.
According to Jacob, blessing is
whatever you’re able to get your hands on. Blessing means taking what’s there for the taking. Blessing means success: power,
prestige, wealth. So far, Jacob
has had a lot of success. He has
been able to get his hands on his brother’s birthright, his father’s blessing,
his father-in-law’s daughters, and much of his father-in-law’s fortune. Jacob has done alright for
himself. I would say he’s probably
happy.
Happiness. That’s about as much of a blessing as
anyone could ask for, right?
The Dark Side to Jacob’s Happiness
Perhaps. But in Jacob’s “happiness” we also see
a dark side. The dark side to
getting what you want is struggle.
Not only the struggle to get ahead, but also the struggle to stay ahead. The struggle not to lose what you’ve
won.
In the verses that immediately
precede today’s story, we are told that Jacob is “greatly afraid and
distressed” (32:7). Why? His brother Esau is coming to meet
him. With four hundred men by his
side. To Jacob, this is dark
news. All that he has won could
soon become lost. The struggle
never ends.
At the beginning of today’s scripture, night has
fallen. Jacob sends his family and
all that he has across the river ahead of him. It seems a rather odd move. Why doesn’t he join them? Perhaps he is a coward and simply wants a shield between him
and his brother. But more likely,
I think, he’s in a reflective mood.
They say that before you die, your entire life flashes
before you. Perhaps sensing the
end, Jacob wants to stand back for a moment, separate, alone, to try to drink
it all in: to look across the river upon the sum total of his life, all that he
has won, all that is his. Perhaps
he is trying to claim the happiness that he has been struggling for his whole
life. Perhaps he is trying to feel it. Because perhaps right now all his success feels strangely
hollow. And so he stands back and
gazes upon all that is his, and he tries to savor it. He tries to convince himself that this is happiness—he has
been happy, hasn’t he?
“Like a Drowning Man”
And it’s in the pitch black of
that moment, when Jacob’s happiness feels hauntingly hollow, that a shadow
seizes him and throws him into the dust of the earth. Dislodged from his lonely thoughts, Jacob does what he has
always done. He wrestles. He and the stranger tumble about the
ground, seizing at each other’s heels, holding fast to whatever can be grabbed,
never letting go.
Jacob exerts every last ounce of
energy and appears to be gaining the upper hand. But then as the night nears its end, Jacob suddenly feels
his hip put out of joint. How did
that happen? The stranger merely
touched it. It is almost as though
the stranger had been waiting to touch his hip just so, as though he had been
waiting until Jacob had given everything, so that when he was overcome, he
would know that he was truly and completely overcome. With his hip thrown out, the tide has
turned. Jacob still hangs on—only
now he grabs the stranger “not [out] of violence but [out] of need, like…a
drowning man.”[1]
As the dark of night gives way to
the hazy glow of morning, the stranger speaks for the first time. “Let me go, for morning is upon
us.” But Jacob holds on for dear
life. “Not until you bless me,” he
gasps. So the stranger asks his
name, and Jacob tells him. Then
while the two remain in an embrace that looks less and less like fighting and more
and more like friendship, the stranger proclaims: “No longer will you be called
Jacob, but Israel” (32:28).
Jacob Wrestles Now with Something Else
In the Old Testament, names
contain entire stories. Do you
remember the story of Ishmael and Hagar?
Put their names together—Ishmael Hagar—and you get “God hears” “the
outsider,” which is, in fact, the truth of Ishmael and Hagar’s own story. The name Jacob means something like
wrestler.[2] The name Israel means something like
wrestler, too.[3] In other words, Jacob’s new name is not
a great departure from his old name. But there is one tiny difference, and it makes all the
difference. It’s the “El” in
“Israel.” “El” means God. In the past, Jacob wrestled with the
world: his brother, his father, his father-in-law, all in an effort to get
ahead, to get what they had. But
now the terms of conflict have been reversed. No longer does Jacob wrestle with the world. Now he wrestles with God.
From “Jacob” to “Israel.” The names tell the story. The stranger seems to be saying, “In
the past, you, Jacob, held onto the heels of others. Now you will hold onto God. You will not let go, and neither will God. Now…let go of the heels you have been
grasping at so that you can hold onto God.”[4]
And sure enough, when Jacob meets
Esau the next day, he lets go of his heel: he gives him many of his possessions
and also a blessing. Which
blessing? The Bible does not
specify. But I’d like to think
that what Jacob gave Esau was the birthright and blessing that he had taken
earlier from Esau. Power,
prestige, wealth—whatever happiness can be found in these things—this is no
longer what Jacob is grabbing after.
Now he is wrestling with something else.
Wrestling with God, Hoping to Lose
The Greek writer Nikos
Kazantzakis recalls from his early years a visit to an old monastery. There he spoke with an old monk, Father
Makarios.
He asked the monk, “Do you still
wrestle with the devil?”
“Not any longer, my child,”
Father Makarios replied. “I have
grown old now, and he has grown old with me. He doesn’t have the strength…. [Now] I wrestle with God.”
“With God!” Nikos exclaimed in
astonishment. “And you hope to
win?”
“I hope to lose, my child,” the
monk said. “[But] my
bones…continue to resist.”[5]
Our Defeat Is Love’s Victory
The good news of God’s blessing
can also be difficult news.
Because it means losing.
And losing is something we resist.
Do you remember when Jacob first
got an inkling of God’s blessing?
It also happened at night.
It grabbed him in the one moment when he was not grabbing, in the one
moment when he had made himself vulnerable. Vulnerable to sleep.
Vulnerable to a dream.
God’s blessing was not something he could seize. It was only something that could seize
him when he was not in control.
But when Jacob woke the next morning, the dream slowly faded and he
returned to his heel-grabbing ways.
The second time that God’s
blessing grabs Jacob at night, though, Jacob is changed. This time, Jacob emerges from the night
a new man. No longer does he
return to wrestling with the world, struggling, taking what’s for the
taking.
Now he knows that his real
struggle is with God. And now he
knows that the real blessing is in his own defeat. When our egos are defeated, when our self-seeking will is
broken—when we forgive instead of indulging our selfish desire for payback,
when we welcome someone who upsets our routine, when we give to the point of
self-sacrifice, whenever we lose our life for the sake of others—then God wins. And although this experience may feel
at first like a fight, like a wrestling match, like a cross…we will discover if
we hold on long enough that we are held in the arms of love, the arms of
blessing, the arms of God.
When we win, it’s only ever with small
things and the victories themselves make us small. But when we are defeated by the undying grip of love, then
we are made anew in the blessing of God.[6]
Jacob emerged from the dark night
with a limp. Jesus emerged from
the dark tomb with scars to show.
From what darkness are you emerging? From what fight with God? What is your blessing?
Maybe it doesn’t feel like a blessing. Maybe it feels like a deep wound. Maybe you’ll limp for the rest of your life.
But if our fight is with God,
then let us hold on. And like
Jacob, we might find that those fearsome arms holding us are in fact the arms
of love, whose victory is our defeat.
Prayer
Beloved Opponent,
Who demands of us everything,
Before giving us everything—
Lead us from the struggles of
this world
To the struggle with you,
Where we are defeated
And where your love emerges
victorious,
With blessing for all.
In the name of him whose glory is
the cross, Jesus Christ.
Amen.
[1] Frederick Buechner, Secrets in the Dark: A Life in Sermons (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2007), 7. Much of this sermon reflects the interpretation offered by Buechner in his sermon, “The Magnificent Defeat.”
[2] More
literally, “he grabs at heels.”
[3] More
literally, “he contends with God,” or “God contends.”
[4] Adapted from
the story’s retelling in Jonathan Sacks, Genesis:
The Book of Beginnings (Covenant & Conversation Series; New Milford,
CT: Maggid, 2009), ebook loc. 3872.
[5] Conversation
from Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco
(trans. Peter Bien; New York: Simon and Schuster, 1965), 222-223.
[6] Inspired by
Rainer Maria Rilke’s “The Man Watching.”
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